Teachers, parents learn tough lessons of merging city schools

KINGSTON, N.Y. -- Most parents, teachers, and school administrators agree that most of the children from Frank L. Meagher Elementary School, which closed last June, adapted quite well to their relocation to John F. Kennedy Elementary School at the beginning of the current school year.

The grown-ups were the ones who struggled with the transition, they said.

IN RECENT interviews, parents and school administrators spoke of early divisions in the Kennedy Parent Teacher Association and minor turf wars within the newly merged teaching staff, although every teacher and teaching assistant who spoke to the Freeman said their relationships were good from the start.

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Regardless of early issues, both school communities have increasingly come together over the course of the school year, and say the year of planning time set aside for the next series of mergers when Zena, Anna Devine, and Sophie Finn elementary schools close in June will make a significant difference.

DISTRICT OFFICIALS started down the road that led to Meagher's closure when they hired consultant Paul Seversky to study the capacity of the district's 11 elementary schools. Seversky told the Board of Education in August 2010 that the district's elementary schools were 22 percent under-enrolled.

Citing infrastructure issues with the building, the school board decided in March 2011 to close Meagher in June 2012 amid heavy opposition from neighborhood residents. School district leaders got bogged down in a contentious dialogue about how to restructure the district amid a growing financial crisis.

Superintendent Paul Padalino replaced former Superintendent Gerard Gretzinger in January 2012. A month later, Padalino announced he would not reconsider closing Meagher, and two months after that, he announced the plan to merge the Kennedy and Meagher school populations, leaving little time to prepare for the transition.

"MEAGHER parents were so busy fighting for our school to consider what would happen if we lost our home," parent Jennifer Boughton recalled.

Kathy Hernandez, president of the Kennedy Parent Teacher Association, said after the Meagher migration, former Meagher students and teachers actually outnumbered the existing Kennedy students and staff in the building. The same trend held at PTA meetings.

Several former Meagher teachers, including Carol Dexter, Cori Allen, and Laurie Fay, said the Kennedy teachers made them feel welcome from the start, although Hernandez said some adults in the Kennedy community feared the influx of new faculty and families would change a culture that has served the JFK school well.

"In the beginning, everyone was so worried about Meagher because their school was closing that it was like they were forgetting it will affect JFK too," Hernandez said.

Padalino said the short timeline to plan the merger complicated transition efforts. He said he learned "when you're merging two cultures, you have to address two cultures, not just (that of the school) that is closing."

The idea behind merging instead of splintering staff is to make students as comfortable as possible in their new schools.

"It's a different culture," Padalino said. "It's not easy, and in the same way as moving all of our teachers at the same time to one building is a great idea for the group, it also creates those two cultures coming together, whereas if I had splintered them all across the district, they would be one or two people going into different cultures, not two cultures colliding."

Padalino said it took some time for the teachers to get used to one another, but they have come along. The additional planning time for the Finn, Devine, and Zena communities to get to know their counterparts at Harry L. Edson, Robert Graves, and Edward R. Crosby schools will create a dynamic in which "everyone knows each other by September," he said.

Among the Meagher and Kennedy PTAs, representatives recall having little time to meet before the merger and having some early miscommunications.

Early on, Boughton said former Meagher parents felt like they were being ignored. Hernandez said Kennedy parents felt like they were being ganged up on at PTA meetings. Disagreements about how to coordinate fundraisers and observe holidays ensued, and the effort to change the school's mascot became controversial.

The students ended up overwhelmingly voting to change the mascot from a baby tiger to a hawk, but Boughton said two teachers refused to let their classes participate in the schoolwide vote.

"There's bound to be some friction when you have two groups of people learning to live together," said Dexter, a first grade teacher who joined Kennedy's staff after spending her first 32 years of her education career at Meagher.

Still, both sides were able to find common ground from the start by reproducing Meagher's old opening day school pep rally, a gesture from the Kennedy school community that teachers, students, and parents from Meagher found meaningful.

Hernandez said she appreciated Boughton's leadership in pushing for upgrades to the dilapidated Hasbrouck Park playground equipment Kennedy students use, and many parents from both school communities recently united in taking complaints about lunch monitors bullying their children to Padalino and the Board of Education.

"When it comes to the children and their safety and their happiness, we have all come together," Boughton said. Hernandez agreed.

The educators in the school community have rallied around the children's needs as well. Principal Clark Waters said overcoming some egos was a challenge early in the merger process, but in the end, it has been all about what is best for the students.

"It is hard to discern who was here before compared to now," said fifth grade teacher Peggy Toscher, who was with Kennedy before the merger and spoke highly of her new coworkers.

Several former Meagher educators shared Fay's sentiment when she said she misses Meagher's "smallness and hominess," but found the Kennedy community to be welcoming. Fay noted that as recently as Tuesday, Waters had asked her if she still feels welcome at Kennedy.

Fay, a fourth-grade teacher, and Allen, who teaches third grade, spoke highly of Kennedy's infrastructure. The pair described the building as being in better shape and having better technology than Meagher. The teachers said the classrooms are notably larger, providing more flexibility for activities like group work.

Fay also cited moving from two underutilized buildings to a relatively full school as a benefit because she has enjoyed the sense of community that she has developed with other teachers from the same grade level.

"It's nice to have someone to work with and bounce ideas off of," Fay said.

Allen and Fay also said Kennedy has more after-school activities available for a wider range of students.

"Change is good sometimes," Fay said.

One of the lessons the group of former Meagher educators said they took away from the merger is the resilience of children.

Fay noted that she went to Brigham Elementary School when it closed in 1983 and merged with Chambers Elementary School. Just like now, she said, "it was harder for the parents than the kids."